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Topic Review

Environmental Regulations, Renewable Energy, and Energy Efficiency

European Union (EU) countries pay meticulous attention to environmental issues and achieve carbon-free development. In this direction, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and extending renewable energy are the primary goals. At the same time, the energy price and declining energy efficiency increase countries’ environmental expenditures and hinder their capabilities for economic growth. Renewable energy is crucial for furthering a country’s green economic growth. At the same time, environmental regulation has a significant role in extending renewable energy.

459
23 Nov 2023

Topic Review

China’s Green Finance Policy on Green Technology Innovation

Green finance policy (GFP) is widely used to incentivize enterprises to develop green technology innovation (GTI). GFP guides diversified financial capital from high-polluting enterprises and energy-consuming projects to eco-friendly enterprises and cleaner production projects by factoring in the costs of environmental risk into investment decision-making within the financial sector.

444
11 Sep 2023

Topic Review

Tax Buoyancy in Indonesia

In Indonesia, the taxation system operates within a family-based framework, where the combined income of all family members is considered a single economic entity for taxation purposes, typically managed by the father. In the realm of taxation, entities or corporations denote groups of individuals or capital functioning collectively, irrespective of their engagement in commercial activities. Value-added tax (VAT) is obligatory for businesses offering taxable goods or services, necessitating their registration as VAT taxpayers.

427
12 Jan 2024

Topic Review

Microeconomic Explanation of Citizen Participation in Open Government

The digital economy and the sharing economy have changed the role citizens may acquire in society. Citizens can perform at least two roles from the open government perspective: on the one hand, they can be passive users/demanders of information and, on the other hand, they can provide or produce the information in an active manner.

422
05 Jan 2024

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

A Systematic Review of Driving Sustainability Through Circular Economy Marketing: Insights and Strategies for Green Marketing Innovation

Circular economy marketing (CEM) represents an innovative approach to aligning business strategies with sustainability objectives. This paper explores the role of CEM as a driver of green marketing innovation, emphasising strategies that minimise environmental impact on business competitiveness while enhancing consumer engagement. Using a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA methodology, we identified 39 high-impact studies across multiple industries, categorising findings into key themes, theoretical frameworks, and marketing strategies. The analysis highlights emerging trends, including the shift toward product-service systems (PSSs), behavioural nudging, transparent sustainability branding, and integration of digital technologies such as AI and blockchain to enhance traceability and consumer trust. Findings reveal that while circular economy marketing presents opportunities for businesses to differentiate themselves and build long-term sustainability strategies, significant challenges remain, including scalability issues, consumer scepticism, and risks of greenwashing. Moreover, gaps in standardising impact measurement and industry-specific adaptation hinder wider implementation. Business model innovation, policy support, and collaborative efforts are crucial in overcoming these barriers. This study provides insights for businesses, policymakers, and researchers, highlighting how CEM fosters green innovation and competitiveness. Future research should compare the effectiveness of various strategies to accelerate the transition toward sustainable marketing practices through regulation and interdisciplinary collaboration.

381
20 May 2025

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

From Digital Twins to Digital Triplets in Economics and Financial Decision-Making

This entry reviews the evolution from Digital Twins (DT) to Predictive Digital Twins (PDT) and Digital Triplets (DTr), culminating in Predictive Digital Ecosystems, which focus on economic and financial decision-making. It discusses historical developments, technical foundations, practical applications, ethical and regulatory challenges, and future directions. The overview integrates mature knowledge from engineering, data science, and economic domains to provide a structured reference framework for understanding and deploying Predictive Digital Ecosystems.

377
26 Jun 2025

Topic Review

Energy Transportation Uncertainty

Energy Transportation Uncertainty (ETU) is a measure of the unpredictability and risk associated with the physical transportation of energy resources through global supply chain networks. First systematically quantified by Morão (2025), ETU captures disruptions and perceived threats to the midstream energy sector, including pipelines, tanker ships, storage terminals, and transmission infrastructure that connect energy producers with consumers.

125
29 Aug 2025

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

This entry presents the history, geography, business, regulations, and the roles of gig workers, platform/algorithms, and employers, focusing primarily on the USA and the EU. The gig economy is informally referred to also as the fourth industrial revolution or the 1099 economy, emphasising sharing, freelance, or platform work; it is a complex and changing business model and regulatory environment. In practice, the gig economy refers to a tripartite relation between workers, platforms/apps, and employers, leading to a two-sided market, where algorithms match supply and demand for paid labour and clients. It is only recently that the gig economy has started to be conceptualised, and its implications, challenges, and impacts are captured in economic law and society, including the power dynamics related to the interplay between economics, technology, regulation, and communities. Conceptually, the gig economy is important, as small paid work has always been present in society for all types of workers and beneficiaries. This new business model of on-demand work has some perceived advantages, such as freedom of work, under-regulation, efficient use of capital, driving down costs, and improving services. However, there is a dualisation of anti-power between workers and non-employers that may lead to precarious work, less free workers, and shadow corporations that distort the market using game changers like digital management algorithms. Currently, the size of the gig economy comprises 154–435 million gig workers out of the world’s 3.63 bn workers, with a market size of USD 557 bn, and is still expanding.

50
23 Dec 2025

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

Trinity Law Framework: Health Insurance Taxonomy

Despite seven decades of international commitment—from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights through SDG 3.8—universal health coverage remains stubbornly out of reach. Two billion people, predominantly informal sector workers, lack access to sustainable health insurance. This entry explains the underlying cause: sustainable health insurance requires specific behavioral and institutional conditions for collective action—conditions that existing health insurance models systematically fail to satisfy, thereby structurally excluding informal populations. The Trinity Law framework formalizes these conditions as three multiplicatively interacting requirements—Trust (T), Consensus (C), and Dual Benefit (DB)—expressed as S = T × C × DB. Empirical analysis of community-based health insurance schemes across 24 countries identifies a robust trust threshold (τ* ≈ 0.68) operating as a behavioral phase transition: below this level, cooperation collapses; above it, participation becomes self-sustaining. Cross-country evidence from 274 organizations across 155 countries confirms consensus thresholds (C* ≈ 0.59), while analysis of 158,763 observations validates dual benefit mechanisms. The multiplicative structure explains why partial reforms fail: weakness in any single component drives overall sustainability toward zero. Applied to health insurance, this framework distinguishes conventional systems—Bismarckian employment-based, Beveridgean tax-financed, and commercial health insurance from sustainable systems like participatory community-based microinsurance that satisfy all three Trinity Law conditions through participatory design, transparent governance, and aligned incentives. The persistent UHC gap reflects not implementation failures but fundamental design incompatibilities that the Trinity Law makes explicit. This entry has three objectives: first, it states the Trinity Law conditions; second, it summarizes the empirical evidence for each component; third, it applies the framework to classify major health insurance models. Supporting datasets and code are available in the referenced Zenodo repositories. The term ‘law’ follows the tradition of social science regularities like the ‘law of demand’: a robust empirical pattern with strong predictive validity, not a claim to physical certainty.

18
29 Dec 2025

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

Creative Digital Platform Work and New Labour Protection in China

The digital labour economy is a system where work is mediated through digital technologies and online platforms. Work is often also called platform labour or gig work. China has brought out new labour protections to promote and support these new forms of employment (NFE) to address gaps in existing labour rights, personal data protection, and AI governance. However, a new type of work in the digital labour economy is creative digital platform work, which is distinct from other kinds of digital work and gig work that only uses AI and digital platforms to receive work, gigs, and tasks. Visual artists’ work is mediated by multiple digital software, AI programs, platforms, and apps. However, they do not have the usual ‘labour relationship’ like gig workers or platform labourers, as they are not employed by any single platform.

14
03 Feb 2026

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

Opaque Price Control and Algorithmic Authority in Financial Markets

Financial markets are increasingly shaped by opaque price controls influenced by the rising prominence of algorithmic and AI-driven systems in price determination. While much of the current research on algorithmic trading and market microstructure has emphasised aspects such as efficiency, liquidity, and model clarity, there has been less focus on the broader implications of assigning inference, execution, and learning tasks to adaptive algorithms. This entry presents a conceptual framework that aims to elucidate how algorithmic systems fundamentally alter price discovery. It highlights the centralisation of epistemic authority, the diminishing of human interpretative capabilities, and the emergence of “rational opacity”. This condition allows prices to remain informationally efficient while obscuring the causal relationships between information and price formation, making them difficult to comprehend for human participants both prior to and in real-time. We introduce the Algorithmic Price Discovery Loop, a theoretical model that connects algorithmic inference, automated execution, feedback-driven learning, and the resulting asymmetry in market-wide interpretation. The framework not only provides critical theoretical insights but also proposes testable propositions and outlines various empirical avenues for investigating algorithmic authority and opacity across different market contexts. Furthermore, the discussion addresses governance implications, recognises the limitations of existing regulatory frameworks, and highlights potential crises that could arise in AI-driven financial markets.

12
20 Jan 2026

Topic Review Peer Reviewed

Extremes of the Edgeworth Box

Extremes of the Edgeworth box concern corner allocations and their relationship to the contract curve in a two-good, two-agent exchange economy. In the standard pure-exchange setting with well-behaved preferences, the contract curve comprises all Pareto-efficient allocations, including interior tangencies and boundary corners, where no mutually beneficial trade remains. When money is introduced as a numéraire (a medium of exchange only), real feasibility and preferences are unchanged, so the contract curve remains the benchmark for efficiency. When money provides liquidity services (is valued for holding), agents may rationally abstain from trade even near interior tangencies; short-run outcomes can therefore include inaction at corners. This entry defines these objects, outlines the efficiency conditions at boundaries, and summarizes how monetary interpretations affect short-run behavior in general equilibrium and monetary economics. The Edgeworth geometry remains a real-exchange depiction; when we discuss money as a store of value, we use it as a short-run, reduced-form outside option that proxies intertemporal motives. This does not “fix” the box; it clarifies why no-trade at or near corners can be individually rational when liquidity is valued.

8
03 Feb 2026

Topic Review

Legislative Cost Estimation Systems in South Korea and the U.S.

This entry aims to enhance the legislative cost estimation system in South Korea by conducting a comparative analysis with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in the United States. The analysis reveals significant structural divergences between the two systems. First, the US system operates under binding fiscal rules like PAYGO, whereas the South Korean system functions primarily as an informational tool. Second, a severe workload imbalance exists; South Korean analysts at the National Assembly Budget Office (NABO) handle approximately 12.7 times more estimates annually than their US counterparts, placing a substantial burden on personnel. Third, unlike the US, South Korea lacks institutional mechanisms to alleviate this workload or enforce the utilization of cost estimates. The findings suggest that expanding NABO’s analytical workforce and institutionalizing the linkage between cost estimates and legislative decision-making are essential for improving fiscal efficiency.

6
22 Jan 2026

Topic Review

Digital Governance as an Enabler of Economic Recovery

Greece’s 2010–2018 adjustment programmes provide an insightful case of how timing of reforms, institutional frictions, and digital transformation jointly condition the outcomes of macroeconomic stabilization efforts. This review builds on programme evaluations, recent academic work, and empirical indicators to analyze the dynamics at the intersection of macroeconomic adjustment, institutional quality, and entrepreneurship, placing emphasis on productivity and the evolving role of digital governance. The paper argues that the asymmetric sequencing of fiscal consolidation, internal devaluation, institution-building, and digital modernization is consistent with deeper and more persistent output losses than initially anticipated, as complementary reforms in product markets and public administration were not yet in place. Recovery momentum was observed when administrative simplification, transparency reforms, and digital public services began to reduce transaction costs, uncertainty, and implementation frictions. In this perspective, digital governance—through initiatives such as Diavgeia, and interoperable registries—acted as an enabling complement to the effectiveness of structural reforms, supporting the shift towards a more innovation-oriented entrepreneurial ecosystem. While the evidence is associative rather than causally identified, the synthesis highlights mechanisms and transferable lessons for the design and sequencing of reform programmes in crisis and recovery contexts.

3
28 Jan 2026

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